Dictation as a Language Learning Tool

Abstract

Dictation has been used in the field of language learning for several years. However, most of the language instructors and methodologists regard this method as useless and out-of-date. Indeed it is a teaching technique which enables teachers to focus on language proficiency of their students. It may both be used as a device for teaching a specific language phrase or clause and to list syntactic mistakes. This paper reports pervasive decoding/listening problems of word recognition and segmentation in connected speech at normal and high speed among Turkish high school students at the intermediate level through the use of dictation. The findings of the study indicates that there is a difference between the teacher-lead dictation and tape-recorded dictation during the dictation process.